Obsidian’s Bold Future: Eternity Meets Skyrim, A Second KS

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Have you read our recent mega–blowouts of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity? Then congratulations: you know everything about Pillars of Eternity except what the pillars of eternity actually are. But Obsidian’s not planning to dip a furtive pinky toe into classic CRPG waters and then leave its legacy behind again. This time, it’s in control of its own destiny, and no one knows that better than CEO Feargus Urquhart. He wants to push the classic Black Isle mold further than it’s ever gone before, into worlds so immense that the classic Infinity Engine never would’ve been able to handle them. But that was then, and this is now. His company has new-old tech and new-old ideas. Hear all about Urquhart’s grandest plans below.

At this point, I think it would be fair to say that Obsidian would be kind of silly to not do another Kickstarter. I know it, you know it, and – heck – Obsidian definitely knows it. Pillars of Eternity isn’t the sort of thing you just toss out of the nest and abandon to the ravenous fangs of time. Not if you can avoid it. Kickstarter let Obsidian don its old Black Isle duds and relive its heyday. That was never supposed to happen. Old-school PC RPGs were dead. Dead like punk rock, dead like face-to-face communication, dead like, well, PC gaming.

How could we make something more like a Skyrim for PC with the engine we made for Eternity?

But some things don’t actually die. They just go dormant, and then they evolve. And once you’ve kicked off an evolutionary growth spurt, the next big question is obvious: how do you keep it going? That’s where Obsidian’s at these days. It can make games like it used to again, but with the aid of shiny new tech, lower costs, and viewers like you. In some ways, it’s uncharted territory, but in others, the blueprint’s been around for ages – devoured by dust after years of disuse. Step one, then, is figuring out how to get rid of all that dust. Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart isn’t positive about anything yet, but he’s definitely got a few ideas kicking around.

“What’s cool about Eternity and then, well, I’d be really surprised if we didn’t make an Eternity II, is having something else we can then use that tech for,” he explains. “I mean, not exactly, because then it would just be a reskinned Eternity. But I always look at the example of what we did back at Black Isle with Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. And then Torment on top of that. Those games used the exact same engine, but they all felt very distinct. That’s what we want to do now too, and I think that’s just gonna help us make each of those games better and better.”

What, then, will be the Icewind Dale or Torment to Pillars of Eternity’s Baldur? Whether devs are chatting fireside, around the ol’ watering hole, or near something that actually exists in a game development studio, that question is the talk of Obsidian. A few standout ideas top the list, but Urquhart has one of his own that he’s especially fond of. And yeah, it sounds exciting. Really exciting.

“What I’m trying to figure out is, how could we make something that is more like a Skyrim for PC – forget console for now – with the engine we made in Unity for Eternity? Where we are with our conversation, quest, data editors, and all of that. If we were careful about scope and let Chris Avellone go wild with creating a new world, more of an open world, what could we do?”

“How much would it cost? Would it make sense for it to be episodic? Because going out there and saying, ‘We’re gonna make 100 hours of gameplay,’ everyone goes, ‘Oh my god, how could it not cost millions?’ But could we create ten hours and have people pay ten bucks? And generally when we say ten hours, it’s usually 15. But if we go with five episodes, then people get between 50 and 75 hours.”

It’s certainly an intriguing thought, practically a missing link in the RPG food chain. What would’ve happened if CRPGs stayed in the Infinity Engine mold, but pumped resources into size, scope, ambition, and sandboxy-ness instead of graphical fidelity and cinematics? What would the genre have become? Now, finally, we might be able to find out.

But it’s not just about playing to nostalgia. This is actually a very practical consideration on Urquhart’s (urqu)part, as he doesn’t really see any other way to do a game this huge while maintaining full creative control.

“What could we do that would be interesting enough and at the right quality level?” he ponders aloud. “Because the one worry we have about moving away from pre-rendered stuff, is that as soon as we get into first-person or third-person or something like that, the expectation of triple-A-level console graphics comes in. So what can we do for a lower budget but let people still say, ‘Whoa, that’s crazy’?”

That’s hardly Obsidian’s only offshoot idea, though – just Urquhart’s favorite. In many ways, Eternity’s imbued the entire company with a renewed sense of possibility, so it’s leaving no stone un-turned, no plane un-scaped.

“We have other ideas too,” he enthuses. “Like Eternity has a big party size, but what happens if we render in close and have a smaller party? Make it more about the characters and less about the tactics? There’s a lot of ideas, and we want to see what [game engine] Unity can do as well.”

Despite a plan to develop them with a small team, these ideas might not even make it to Kickstarter, either. In fact, it sounds like Obsidian’s already narrowed down its direction for a second Kickstarter quite a lot. During our chat, Urquhart only offers sly hints, just as one might expect from a man who once oversaw the most silver-tongued of espionage RPGs and yeah, no, it’s not going to be Alpha Protocol. Damn it.

“There’s something we’re talking about that I think would be really cool, but it’s not an original property,” he says. “It’s a licensed property. But it’s not Alpha Protocol! It’s something we can still do a ton of creative stuff with, though. And then the other thing is an original property. Also, there’s a third thing that somebody approached us with, but I really don’t think that’s going to work out.”

Regardless, a second Kickstarter is pretty much a lock. That’s really not much of a surprise after Eternity vacuumed up dollars like a vending machine on the verge of starvation. Still though, it’s a bit surprising to hear out loud, given that Pillars of Eternity is still fairly early. That, according to Urquhart is why you’re only hearing at this point, and not seeing, touching, or, er, tasting (which, to be fair, isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility). You paid for a game, not the opportunity to fund another game. Obsidian is well aware of that.

“We’re very grateful for what people have given us, and I don’t want to go back to the well before we’ve proven anything,” Urquhart confesses. “That would be really lame of us. But I think we have a good idea and we’ve kind of proven things with Eternity to a point. Obviously we have a larger studio, so we actually have people to work on stuff [beforehand]. But I don’t want people to feel like we’re taking advantage of them.”

“I’m happy to make Eternity, and the hope is to come up with another Kickstarter that people would be interested in. My hope is that by March or April of next year, we’ll have something we can kind of start talking to people about.”

Ideally, he adds, he’d like to employ a setup not unlike inXile’s with Wasteland 2 and Torment. In other words, run a second Kickstarter when the first game is nearly finished so that the Eternity team can seamlessly transition over. For now, though, it’s all Pillars of Eternity, er, most of the time. Urquhart’s simply laying the tracks for his company’s next excursion into not-entirely-uncharted (but also kinda uncharted) territory, preparing for the future. And for the first time in a long time, he’s getting to do it his way.

“What’s interesting is, right now, between Steam and Kickstarter, developers are creating the brands,” he observes. “Not publishers. It hasn’t been this way since the ’90s. I’m not sure what it means yet, but it’s exciting.”

History, they say, is doomed to repeat itself. But if you ask Obsidian, they’ll probably tell you that’s a-okay.

149 Comments

The idea of a Skyrim-style game as an isometric game is an interesting one – I know they’ve talked about continuing the ‘Pillars’ world over multiple games. If we’re looking at this generation’s Forgotten Realms, sign me up.

I also agree that Obsidian shouldn’t be looking at another kickstarter already. I refuse to back a 2nd kickstarter by any company that hasn’t delivered on their first project yet. I didn’t back Tides of Numera for the same reasons as Wasteland 2’s had barely ended.

No reason. In fact, most companies the size of Obsidian or inXile (or Double Fine) are making multiple games simultaneously at various stages in development as a matter of course and it’s pretty much an economic necessity to continue to be able to afford to employ the people they’ve got. If they want to keep funding themselves through Kickstarter and not go back to the strictures of working with publisher funding, then, they’re going to have to launch additional projects before the first one is done, like both inXile and Obsidian have done. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. These are established companies with track records of getting the job done. And at least in the cases of Obsidian and Double Fine, a strong track record of excellence in the final result even despite substantial publisher shenanigans along the way that they shouldn’t have to deal with with their Kickstarter projects. inXile…well, there’s good people there and they’ve certainly shipped games but the relative quality of those projects was one of my key concerns with Wasteland 2, originally. Thankfully it’s looking to be flipping fantastic so far.

How much money they got relative to the original goal is irrelevant to, because there was no game or even idea for a game beyond ‘classic adventure game.’ Once they got that much money the scope of the game changed radically, unfortunately Tim grossly over designed the game exceeded even that increased scope (this is where a publisher would have been good).

@Cinek that doesn’t mean anything, did you even bother to check the Kickstarter pitch?. Double Fine was VERY CLEAR: they didn’t know what would happen, it could tumble down but the backers would at least get a nice documentary of the whole process. And guess what? We have been getting the nice documentary. (We’ll also get a very cool adventure game by the looks of it!)

This also goes to the people who wouldn’t back a second Kickstarter before the first one is delivered. This is about backing *projects*, not about *buying products*.

@Cinek, I presume you are not a backer (or don’t track the project very closely), so I understand where you are coming from. Let me tell you that backers are majorly pleased with Double Fine. I have no figures, but looking at their forum, I would say it is certainly over 90% of them. In fact I would say 99% of them.

I backed Torment because I was happy with where Wasteland 2 was at the time. It was a simple decision.

The thing is, you can’t expect a video game company to go all-in making one single game from inception to release; not everyone is equally useful at every stage of development.

There’s the designers and writers, who need to pin down things like storyline, mechanics and style early on, have strong involvement through the middle, but really don’t have much to do at the end, because everyone knows what’s up.

Then you have the artists, who do some concept work in the early stages but are mostly concerned with doing their magic during the middle and end of development; you don’t really make new sets and pieces at the very end of things.

And then there’s the programmers, who really don’t do very much besides prototype things at the beginning but will continue to work on the project even after release – there’s always more bugs, after all.

Basically, game development is a pipelined process, and different people are involved at different stages; if you only have one game going through the pipeline at a given time, you’ll have people sitting around doing very little.

Sci Fi? Absolutely! We’ve seen hack n slash and action RPGs set in a sci-fi world, but few if any real turn based or RTwP ones with deep story and conversations. Hell, space based (ala Mass Effect), dystopian cyberpunk (ala Shadowrun), post apocalyptic (ala Fallout 2) would all be amazing with an iso perspective and tons of dialogue! Hell, one of the failed Kickstarters (Space Shock) really saddened me because it was a promiding old school RPG in a SciFi setting.

Came here to post this. Oh yes! I’m so tired of rehashed Tolkien and D&D settings.

However, it would absolutely need good writing; something a lot better than Mass Effect. It would be a good idea to use a licensed IP, not necessarily following the exact storylines, but at least the setting. Sci-fi game developers that don’t have good writers on staff, usually fail at the world-building part of their games.

A licensed IP like Niven’s Ringworld series might be fun. Those novels had a “party” that was the right size for this engine, although I don’t know if the leveling-up RPG mechanics would be a good fit. There are plenty of other IP’s that would make a good game.

Or, hell, if it has to be something vaguely sword and sorcerish, then license Zelazny’s “Amber” series. At least that had some different ideas than the usual tired fantasy tropes.

It would be a bad idea to use a licensed IP, with the possible exceptions of if it were creator-owned and they could work directly with the author in question rather than a company or their lawyers, or if they could own the license themselves. But generally licensed IP comes with the sort of creative constraints that Kickstarter should be freeing them from, and involves paying significant amounts of money just for the rights to use it, money that could otherwise be spent on making the game. And the end result is your game is made part of an established formula when it doesn’t need to be. I mean, I’m not immune to the lure of IP – a big part of my attraction to Shadowrun Returns was certainly that it was a Shadowrun game, and Telltale’s doing great things with The Walking Dead and Fables – but my most rewarding gaming experiences have either not been licensed properties, or the best parts haven’t really been based on anything they derived from the license.

Those are good points, but balanced against them is that I don’t think I can recall a single sci-fi game that was as compelling as the better sci fi novels I’ve read. And Obsidian doesn’t have a great track record (yet) for original ideas.

The “great” sci-fi games like System Shock, STALKER and (maybe) Mass Effect get by with mediocre settings and stories (by literature standards), because they immerse the player in a 1st or 3rd person view with high production values. An isometric turn-based RPG depends much more on good writing.

I don’t know where you’re coming from, but STALKER has a fantastic and highly unique setting. Its source material was rich enough to inspire one of the all-time greats of cinema (Tarkovsky) to make a film about it (which I highly recommend btw).

Well, firstly, you should play some of the old Legend and Infocom games, particularly Legend’s Gateway games and Infocom’s A Mind Forever Voyaging and Circuit’s Edge. But secondly, you’re certainly not going to get games as exciting as those science fiction novels if you limit them to treading in the footsteps of those novels instead of forging their own path.

Sure, but that’s my point. STALKER took only the setting from the Strugatsky’s original novel and turned it into a theme park shooter. It didn’t have the compelling plot arc and mystery of the original Roadside Picnic novel. It was “just” a shooter (a very good one!) in a unique environment. An RPG isn’t a shooter; it needs better writing.

I’m not saying a game using a licensed IP should just recreate the storyline of the original work, but the writing in a sci-fi game should at least try to be the same quality as the best sci-fi novels. And I haven’t seen much of that, lately. We deserve better than the lazy writing in games like Mass Effect.

What I’m saying is that if you’re just making a derivative work, even if it isn’t a straight up retelling of the original story that created the IP, that derivation is either going to rely on the original IP to prop it up (in which case you’re never going to get something as good as the original, because part of what made that special is its uniqueness and originality), or it’s going to be good in a way that has little or nothing to do with having the trappings of the IP, in which case it seems like kind of a waste to secure the IP and unnecessarily restricting to boot.

My dream game would be no planet of hats aliens, no bloody space elves. Give it a western/frontier flavour and make it about people, factions and politics. Obsidian are one of the few dev’s I’d trust to really pull something like that off

I’m fed up with most trad fantasy, space-opera sci-fi and zombies to be honest.

What I would love to see (as I blabbered about in the last PoE post) is original weird fantasy. As that might be a hard sell, something World of Darkness inspired would be nice. Preferably some of the lesser explored areas, like being part of a werewolf pack patrolling the mundane world against an alien and hungry spirit world. Mages are cool, but the White Wolf version of them are probably overpowered and difficult to put in CRPG form, as much of their charm comes from their powers being pretty free-form and only limited by the creativity of the player.

Though a game of gothic horror would be nice. Call of Cthulhu has a nice mood, but the plot in games tend to feel paper thin. “Oh, a murder to investigate? I’m sure it has nothing to do with cultist trying to summon elder gods. Like all the other times.” Perhaps inspiration could be taken from lesser known game worlds like “In Nomine” or “Kult”.

A setting where power usually has a terrible prize, but you are forced into using it since your opponents use it.

I’m not that crazy about Arkham horror. I still think there are some cool settings that could be done:

Underwater. It’s criminal that the only great underwater games are Aquaria and Endless Ocean (and maybe Aquanox, which I haven’t played).
A space game that’s not epic in scale. More Firefly than Starwars. Especially if its a spelljammer style sci-fi magic mix.
Saga as a setting. I know they don’t want to do licensed stuff, but god that setting is awesome.
Arabian Nights desert fantasy. I always thought it was a tragedy that NWN never went to Calimsham.
Thief the isometric project.

I would say Arcanum style steampunk, but honestly I can’t think of anything I would add to Arcanum.

I like your ideas, IB. There are many real historical places that had art, cultures and mythologies that I thought could be good RPG settings too. Mesoamerican, Byzantium, the court of Versailles, Mamluk sultanate, Warring States period, Wiemar Berlin, etc etc.

I got a very vague impression of Byzantium from Age of Decadence. I would love to see a Mamaluk game. Expedition Conquistador has some cool Mesoamerican Elements, as did Secret of Gaia, and definitely Aztaka. Would love to see more.

Also, I want to see aftermath of magical American Civil War or early 19th century ships on the Pacific. Or Maori exploring alien Islands as the first humans who’ve ever been there.

I wouldn’t trust anyone but the original writers with an In Nomine game – the American translation seems to have completely missed the fact that the original game was totally comical, totally tongue in cheek and often reaching the farcical (My favorite scenario must be the one shot in which you play angels trying to prevent a demon from becoming the new Miss France).

I agree that the murder mysteries are overdone in CoC, but there are many great things to be done with the setting (check for example a scenario like Curse of the Yellow Sign – Digging for a dead god – though, yeah, it’s thoroughly a table top thing, I can’t see that being pulled in a single player game). Delta Green could be nice though…

Thinking about it, if there’s one game from the White Wolf catalog I’d like to see Obsidian have a go at, it’s Wraith. Especially fitting for a Kickstarter, cause I don’t think the project would have any mass market appeal.

I wouldn’t trust anyone but the original writers with an In Nomine game – the American translation seems to have completely missed the fact that the original game was totally comical, totally tongue in cheek and often reaching the farcical (My favorite scenario must be the one shot in which you play angels trying to prevent a demon from becoming the new Miss France).

In Nomine wasn’t a translation of In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, it was a different game loosely based on INS/MV; and it didn’t “miss the point,” it intentionally went for a different, more subtle and varied tone. I haven’t read or played INS/MV, since it’s never been translated into English that I’m aware of, but from what I’ve heard of it, In Nomine sounds like a much deeper and more interesting setting to run stories in. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with comedy RPGs, but if you’re looking for depth of story and gameplay, you don’t run Paranoia.

Anyway, In Nomine had a scenario where you try to prevent a demon from becoming the Demon Prince of Rock’n’Roll, so there’s still room for dark humor there.

(Mind you, they’d need to lose In Nomine‘s deeply shitty system. But according to Wikipedia, the d666 mechanic was actually brought over directly from INS/MV, so, um. Yeah.)

What I’ve seen of the Steve Jackson version kinda left me scratching my head… I still don’t get what they were trying to do, why they’d need too take the original game as a base for that (quoting you back, why would you take Paranoia as a base to make a serious game about living in tyrannical state ? Or Wraith to adapt the Nightmare Before Christmas ?) , and overall, what it brought to the table.

I just don’t get it I guess.
That being said, I didn’t know it was a re-imagining.

I find it fairly playable with the right crew. It’s just not something you want to play often or long in my opinion (though I’ve know people who played it literally like D&D in the world of the dead, in campaign form, with trips inside the Labyrinth to bring back soul-loot and all… well to each their own).
Very suited for short burst.

Open-world plus the Obsidian vibe sounds like something I would enjoy.

There are a couple of Game Designers Workshop RPGs that could be a good fit (besides original IP, of course). One is Space: 1889 — think “Victorians in space.” It was steampunk before the word was invented, with both science fiction and weird horror easily encompassed.

But I lust most emphatically for an Obsidianized open-world CRPG based on Traveller. A fairly indie multiplayer version was essayed a couple of years ago, but it didn’t do well. An Obsidian version would have more resources and experience applied to it, and presumably wouldn’t waste time on multiplayer.

Happily, Marc Miller, the creator of Traveller, owns it now (as Far Future Enterprises). And he’s just released the (Kickstartered) fifth edition of Traveller that synthesizes previous rule sets, so there’s a shiny new version just waiting to be enCRPGed.

+1 for Deadlands, but I would love to see them tackle something like Wraith: The Oblivion

As an effectively dead license, I’m sure Whitewolf would be only too happy to give permission to use it, and it could very well end up being their ‘Torment’. Dark, gothic storytelling in the land of the dead? Hell. Yes.

I’d be okay with sci-fi, preferably hard sci-fi, not space opera. Still, sci-fi has gotten played out a bit, though not nearly as played out as standard pseudo medieval Europe Tolkien-esque fantasy. There are so many great settings that have gone largely untouched by RPGs. How about a wild west RPG? Mythical India RPG? An Arabian Nights RPG? Native American mythology RPG? A Wuxia RPG?

Wuxia would be my top choice. I love Wuxia so much. If Obsidian did a Kickstarter for a Wuxia RPG I would go broke throwing my money at them.

“Like Eternity has a big party size, but what happens if we render in close and have a smaller party? Make it more about the characters and less about the tactics?”

I’ve never quite understood this line of thinking. Why does fewer characters have to mean less tactical? Just Google “sword fighting manuals” or something along those lines and you’ll see the vast array of moves available in melee combat, and they’re usually just showing a couple of blokes duelling. It just requires widening your melee horizons beyond “Hit other dude,” “Hit other dude really hard” and “Hit other dude not quite as hard, but more accurately” which most games boil down to.

Imagine a turn-based RPG that treated melee combat like the fight scenes in the recent Sherlock Holmes movies.

That’s a good point. It’s much easier to chuck in a few new spell effects for a wizard than it is to animate a wider range of fighting moves. It’s one of the often-overlooked things about The Witcher that I really appreciate.

When people refer to “tactics” in gaming they aren’t referring to the combat mechanics but the focus.

Tactics as a genre has a focus on larger, less personal squads fighting turn based and using them as the weapons as opposed to characters. Games like XCOM, Chess, Fire Emblem and Advance Wars are examples of the tactics genre.

Games like Mass Effect, SWOTOR, Dragon Age, Torment, etc have smaller squads and a much more focused approach to treating the units as characters that are fleshed out and play role outside of combat.

Of course Dragon’s Age employs a “Tactical” genre combat system and Fire Emblem employs some rpg elements with the units but its all about the focus.

Sorry, but I can’t say that I’ve ever encountered that usage of the word. Strategy games, yes. Tactics as the name of a genre, not so much. There’s also little to suggest that would be what he meant in the context of the piece.

Its more used with Japanese games to denote the genre but it’s still used in western gaming culture. A strategy view is the World Map whereas the tactical view is the combat screen, normally turn and grid based.

I think more units means more interesting things happening with movement and position. That’s not to say other games are less complex, merely that more characters allows a different set of possibilities. With six characters it’s fare easier to have a more effective front line rather than a single aggro-magnet. You can risk having a weaker line for more mages or use rogues as harassers or off-tanks etc. A great example of this is that it’s hard to have a buff heavy character like a bard in four-person party.

Having more people is an easy way to make things more interesting from a positioning point of view, but in many ways that’s the easy approach, just because it’s tried and tested. Increasing fidelity with decreasing numbers of controllable characters/units is already commonplace in games, so it’s not a new concept. It seems that in party-based fantasy RPGs, the clever stuff gets left to spellcasters.

Melee guys up front, rogues sneaking round the back and micro-manage the mages just seems a bit “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt +2.”

I don’t think he meant that making the party size smaller has to mean less tactical, I think Feargus was implying making a much more story and character focused game, like Torment. It makes all the sense in the world. I mean, they have this fellow named Chris Avellone that works for them, he seems to know his way around storytelling and character development.

I’m really terrified about the possibility of Obsidian trying to go back to Kickstarter now. I’ve seen projects with a ton of heart and creativity, maybe less experience and/or renown, but projects that deserved a chance still fail terribly. I don’t like the idea of seeing some grand, new ideas from Obsidian, only to have them torn away because of Kickstarter fatigue.

Speak for yourself. I backed Eternity as well as Wasteland 2, and have hundreds of hours sunk into Skyrim (as well as Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, both modern Fallouts) and am eagerly awaiting TES VI. People can like more than one kind of thing.

A open world style game in the Eternity iso engine sounds interesting, though not nearly as interesting as an Obsidian open world style game in the Eternity world. A big part (for me) of those open world games is the sense of being there that the first person perspective provides.

Still, more opportunities for Obsidian to just go nuts with world building sounds a-ok to me, whatever form it eventually takes.

Obsidian really don’t do world building though. The only game world they’ve ever built themselves was Alpha Protocol, which has a terribly generic and uninteresting world. Otherwise they’ve just made sequels of existing game worlds … most of them Bioware’s.

Good point, however the stuff they’ve done with existing properties I’ve enjoyed, and shows an encouraging wrestling with constraints, and I’m liking what I’m seeing so far from the Eternity KS updates. A lot of the pitch for this seemed to be the excitement of finally getting let off the chain and doing a whole world of their creation.

It might not work out, so I suppose I’d best reserve judgement before I start calling for “more of this,” but I’m optimistic.

Alpha Protocol was a spy thriller set in the real world. There’s really no worldbuilding required there. All you need are interesting shady characters and plotting and I’d argue that it delivered on both in spades. I’ll grant that the other games have all had an existing setting to draw from, but I don’t think you can look at KOTOR II, New Vegas, NWN 2 (especially Mask of the Betrayer) or especially Dungeon Siege III and say that the most interesting elements of any of those games were provided by the existing IP. Hell, Dungeon Siege III has an insanely strong sense of history propelling the events of its story and the actions of its characters along and some remarkably rich worldbuilding and if any of that stuff was in evidence in the original Dungeon Siege I surely missed it.

But Skyrim isn’t the pinnacle of open world gaming, if anything its a low point that’s riding on the coat tails of Morrowind and Oblivion.

An uninteresting world sparsely filled with repetitive fetch quests, unresponsive to the player’s action and allows the player very few opportunities to even influence the world in any meaningful way. Its the antithesis of the genre Obsidian is rejuvenating.

Personally I’m still trying to decipher what it is exactly they meant by that… Because from where I stand, Skyrim in PE’s engine would be what ? Fantasy Fallout 2 ? An Infinity Engine game with Bethesda like modding ?

What does it mean from a gameplay standpoint ? From a product standpoint ?

I think thats a bit harsh. Its not like they are talking about doing that in Eternity for starters.

Secondly, for many people (myself included) the holy grail of crpgs would be somethign that manages to contain the interesting quests, writing and level design of those classic Infinity engine games with the freedom of exploration of an open world game.

Doesn’t that sound good to you? I’m assuming your criticisms of Skyrim are the usual ones about the quests, locations and NPCs being too generic. Its a very tall order, but wouldnt it be worth SOMEONE trying to address these failings or would you rather nobody tried anything ambitious?

I was mightily excited by the idea of a classically styled open world RPG until he mentioned making it episodic.
It might work if you made the main quest episodic and added some extra content around the world with every new episode, but the whole point, or at least the draw for me, of an open world is that it’s all there for you to discover.
10-15 hours of gameplay for an open world game sounds not very satisfying to me, even if it’s just 10 bucks with the promise of more to come.
I don’t know, I’ll have to hear more about their plans and let it sink in really.
It’s doable, but open world and episodic doesn’t sound like a good combination to me.
If it helps them get it done on the finance side, I will give them the benefit of the doubt though. It’s Obsidian afterall.

I guess it depends on what things he wants to take from it. I didn’t like the level scaling or the shallowness. There was a lot of shallowness, too. Most of the NPCs and quests were pretty meh. Most of the exploration was kind of meh, and rarely resulted in finding anything meaningful or useful (thanks, level scaling). Oh, and the combat was shit.

Skyrim is like chocolate filled with shit and wrapped with shiny paper.
It looks neat on first glance, when you start playing it you can see some delicious chocolate and you’re sinking your teeth in it just to have taste of shit in your mouth after a while. The worst part of it it’s that it take some (way too much) hours to realize how bad this game really is.

Skyrim seems very much the antithesis of an Obsidian game. I play Obsidian games for the story. Bethesda seems to already have cornered the market on story-less sandboxes.

As such, I hope that’s not where they go with their second kickstarter. I’d much rather see something like a sci-fi rpg or a spiritual successor to Alpha Protocol, or even something in the world of darkness setting, if we’re talking licenses.

It looks like this Urquhart fellow is mostly interested in using Kickstarter to cut off the publisher middleman… only to then chase the same modern RPG trends said publisher represents. Skyrim, episodic gaming, smaller party, ‘more about the characters than the tactics’… you name it.

“It’s certainly an intriguing thought, practically a missing link in the RPG food chain. What would’ve happened if CRPGs stayed in the Infinity Engine mold, but pumped resources into size, scope, ambition, and sandboxy-ness instead of graphical fidelity and cinematics? What would the genre have become?”

” “There’s something we’re talking about that I think would be really cool, but it’s not an original property,” he says. “It’s a licensed property” ”

I would be surprised if he wasn’t talking about the WHEEL OF TIME RPG. Obsidian agreed to do it over 3 years ago and have been waiting for the licence holders, Red Eagle, to provide funding. Because Red Eagle are famously inept, they haven’t managed to do so, despite somehow wrangling a distribution deal with EA (but one that didn’t require them to fund the game, a very bizarre deal it has to be said). However, Red Eagle did give a smaller company permission to try to do a mobile and tablet game last year via Kickstarter. This was an unmitigated disaster, raising only $3,000 out of a $450,000 target:

My guess is that Red Eagle have seen how ETERNITY have done and gone to Obsidian to suggest doing the proper WoT RPG this way as well. The combination of Obsidian’s fanbase, people keen for another old-skool RPG and the WoT fanbase could see such a project funded quite handily.

I think they can’t go wrong if they stick with what they’re good at. The IE games are still amongst my favorite games, and I still play them. The variety of the worlds (Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planscape) is what has kept me coming back to them all these years, Planescape being the standout.

If they’re going to do more fantasy, then I’d like to see something different, like D&D’s Dark Sun.

“Where we are with our conversation, quest, data editors, and all of that. If we were careful about scope and let Chris Avellone go wild with creating a new world, more of an open world, what could we do?”

It’s about time for that, isn’t it? There’s Torment and Infinity-engine games, but there’s also a new Avellone-game to make.

Skyrim huge quality is immersion. There is no such a thing with isometric view or even team based controles.
Open world isometric ? It’s just Baldur with more side quest and optional areas. The Skyrim ref sounds like bs to me.

I would like someone to do a skyrim clone, thus, but more Skyrim than Skyrim is. IE remove main quest, and make it clear there absolutely nothing else to do that to choose your own path.

Hi um, i really care for the setting of your future game (well i will care but that is not the point).
The Battlesystem is what i want to talk about. How about someone recreates the battlesystem from Grandia 2, please?
It had the EXACT right mixture of positioning, real time and round (phase) based and tactic play where you had to “think on your feet”.

I registered on this site to comment on this story as I am literally soiling myself with glee. The idea of an open world isometric game by obsidian has me all warm and tingly. If it ends up being from a licensed IP I would absolutely kill for Dark Sun even though I know it will never, ever happen. Or Pathfinder. That would be sweet.

They could go all the way and just sell their unity RPG tools in the asset store for anyone to use for non commercial purposes
If the game is good enough they could cut a deal to release the game commercially.